Address at the State Capitol, Raleigh, North Carolina

Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency the Governor of North Carolina, Your Excellency the Governor of Tennessee, and ladies and gentlemen:

This is an occasion to which I have looked forward for a long time.

I have been interested in this memorial since I was consulted about it by an old friend, who invited me here today. I cannot allow this occasion to pass without reference to that great North Carolinian who contributed so much to the creation of this monument. This project was very close to the heart of my old friend, who was the first chairman of the monument commission-Josephus Daniels.

There is no need for me to tell people in North Carolina what kind of a man Josephus Daniels was. Three times he won eminence in the nation at large--once as Secretary of the Navy during the First World War, then as ambassador to Mexico, and finally as historian of his own times. Triple fame comes to few men. Yet I am inclined to think that you, among whom he lived, may have known him in a capacity greater than any of these. I congratulate you on having known, not just the official, not just the diplomat, not just the scholar, but also the honorable citizen, kindly neighbor, and great-hearted gentleman that he was.

Mr. Daniels understood these great North Carolinians to whom we dedicate this monument today. He told me about the sculptor, Charles Keck. I want to say to you here today that Charles Keck and I, back in 1933 and 1934, worked on the statue of Andrew Johnson to be placed in Jackson County, Mo. After that, he was named to make a statue of Andrew Jackson, which was nothing new to Charles Keck. I think Charles Keck is the greatest sculptor of his time. You have got the right man to make this statue.

Mr. Daniels knew all three of these great men had something in common--the rugged, self-reliant qualities of a free people. They were all men of the people, of deep religious faith, democratic sympathies, and dauntless courage. They never swerved from the people's cause. They deserve not only an enduring monument, but they deserve understanding and remembrance.

We are in the midst of a political campaign upon which depends much of the country's future. It is good at such a time to pause to take strength and guidance from our country's past.

This year, as in all years, the State of North Carolina has much to teach the country. Its great sons have important things to say to us still. And we have important things to learn from them. We deal here today not merely with the dedication of a monument. Our task is the rededication of ourselves.

Each of the three men whose fame this monument celebrates held the office of President in time of trouble.

Andrew Jackson had to face the nullification crisis, which was the first threat of secession.

James K. Polk was confronted by the Mexican War.

Andrew Johnson was caught in the mass hysteria following a war in which more American blood was spilled than in both the world wars of our time.

Because they lived through days when reason was overcome by emotion, their acts were misunderstood and misinterpreted. And because they were misunderstood they were libeled beyond the lot of most Presidents. Intense feeling obscures the truth. And so it is not surprising that the estimates of these men made by their contemporaries have been almost completely discarded by later generations.

In these new estimates, not one of the three has diminished in stature. On the contrary, each is now regarded as a stronger and wiser man.

What each of them meant to his time, you have been told by many learned men. So I shall not repeat what you already know-what Jackson meant to 1832, or Polk to 1845, or Johnson to 1865.

I prefer to offer some suggestions as to what they all mean in 1948--and what they should mean in the years that lie ahead.

Jackson, Polk, and Johnson are gone. Yet they are forever a part of North Carolina. They represent the glory of the past. But that is not all. If that were all, I venture to say that this monument would serve only half its purpose. To the young men and women, to the boys and girls of the State who pass this way, it would say, "We have produced great men." That is true and should be said, but it has no bearing on the future.

It should say more. And to anyone who has studied the careers of these three Presidents, it will say more. It has a message that is not only true as to the past, but it is also encouraging as to the future.

That message is this: "Do your duty, and history will do you justice."

Each of these men did his duty as President of the whole Nation against the forces of pressure and persuasion which sought to make him act as a representative of a part of the Nation only.

Each of them provoked the wrath of some sincere and honest men--which is a serious thing. A President may dismiss the abuse of scoundrels, but to be denounced by honest men honestly outraged is a test of greatness that none but the strongest men survive.

Consider, for example, the career of Andrew Jackson. He has always been held up as a symbol of courage, but too often for reasons that are not the best. It takes courage to face a duelist with a pistol and it takes courage to face a British general with an army. But it takes still greater and far higher courage to face friends with a grievance. The bravest thing Andrew Jackson ever did was to stand up and tell his own people to their faces that they were wrong.

It was all the braver because he knew in his heart that they had some cause for discontent. The Tariff of 1828, which provoked the nullification movement, was well named the Tariff of Abominations. It did inflict injustice upon South Carolina and the other Southern States. Andrew Jackson knew that as well as John C. Calhoun.

But Jackson also knew that the way to correct injustice in a democracy is by reason and debate, never by walking out in a huff.

To attempt to correct injustice by disunion is to apply a remedy that is worse than the disease.

It would not have been pleasant for Andrew Jackson to say this to any State. It was doubly unpleasant to say it to South Carolina, a State composed of people of his own blood, his own faith, of his own qualities of mind and heart, a State to which he was bound by ties of memory, pride and affection. The closing paragraph of the great Nullification Proclamation is eloquent of the pain it cost him to stand against the people so closely allied to him.

But it was his duty, and he did it.

We know now what they could not know then. We know what a pliant, supple man in the White House in that crisis might have cost us. A man more careful to preserve his own peace than to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" might have drifted into ways that would have ended in the destruction of the Union. It is because Andrew Jackson did his duty in agony of mind as well as in agony of body that this monument is raised in his honor.

Let me say, too, how fine a thing it is that this monument was raised in the South by Southerners. Democracy is safe among a people who are too just to withhold respect from a man because his duty once forced him to oppose them.

Consider, then, the case of James K. Polk. Thomas Jefferson has been endlessly praised for adding 827,000 square miles to the United States by the Louisiana Purchase. And he can't be praised too much for that. But the average American is astonished when reminded that Polk added 814,000 square miles of territory to the United States.

This is not the place either to defend or attack Polk's policy in regard to the Mexican War. But there is one aspect of it that is worth serious attention by this generation. Even when the war was won, Polk's efforts to negotiate a generous peace were interfered with by the House of Representatives in such a way as to draw the lines for great internal conflict in later years.

That interference took the form of the Wilmot Proviso, which the House attached to the appropriation bill that supplied the first installment of our payment to Mexico. It was a condition that no area purchased with the money appropriated should be slave territory.

I am not questioning now the merits of the Wilmot Proviso. But it was, nevertheless, an attempt to use foreign policy as a lever in the settlement of domestic questions. Such an attempt is always fraught with peril. We should have learned that fact from the experience of Polk's day and its tragic consequences in the Civil War. Unfortunately, we did not. It took another great foreign war and another disastrous injection of domestic politics into foreign affairs--in the fight on the League of Nations--to drive the lesson home.

But now, I trust, we have learned it. In the midst of the Second World War, President Roosevelt and his great Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, proposed, and certain of our wiser congressional leaders of the opposition agreed, that, as far as they could bring it about, domestic politics should stop at the water's edge. It has been my duty to carry out that agreement and to urge all Americans to abide by it faithfully.

The wisdom of that bipartisan policy should be very clear indeed to North Carolinans. They have before them not only the case of Woodrow Wilson, but also that of Polk. You know that Polk's greatest achievement was clouded for many years, because, in his time, we had not learned to keep our domestic quarrels at home and present a united front to the rest of the world.

Andrew Johnson came to the Presidency by reason of a death that was tragic not merely for the United States, but for all mankind. Suddenly, without a moment's preparation, Johnson was called upon to take up and complete the work of one of the greatest men that ever occupied the White House.

Andrew Johnson needs no defense. But it is a simple statement of fact to point out that in 1865 no man alive could have succeeded Abraham Lincoln without being subject to unfavorable comparisons. And it was Johnson's misfortune to encounter more than that. It is one of the major tragedies of war that the passions it unleashes do not automatically subside with the fighting. They must be subdued gradually. And it usually takes long, patient, and courageous effort.

In 1865 passions were as furious as the war had been long and bloody. There were men in and out of Congress who lost their heads completely. In their madness they were determined that the blood-letting should not stop. They would have sent scores of brave and honorable men to the gallows and stripped thousands more of all they possessed. They wanted to keep a whole region in chains.

That no such disgrace has occurred in the United States is due largely to the bulldog courage of Andrew Johnson. I have no wish to prettily him. He doesn't need it. He was stubborn. He was tactless. Often he was ungracious to the point of being surly. The fact remains that he faced such a storm of hatred as never before had swept this country. And in facing it, he defended not so much certain individuals as the principle that the Constitution of the United States and not the desire of angry men is the supreme law of this land.

His courageous stand has made it easier for every President who has had to cope with postwar hysteria since his day. That task is still no child's play. We have among us today men who, blinded by their fury and their fears, are ready to condemn on suspicion and to punish without trial. To them no President dare yield an inch. If he yielded, he would be unworthy to stand before the monument of Andrew Johnson.

It is a happy circumstance that this is a monument not to one man but to three. Americanism is not embodied in any one man. It is a distillation of the spirits of all the heroes who have labored and fought and died for the common good.

The Constitution declares that there shall be no "titles" of nobility in this Republic. It does not say that there shall be no nobility. We do have what may be described with exact justice as a nobility. But it is not attained by birth. One may come to it from a camp, as Jackson did, or from a university, as Polk did, or from a tailor's bench, as Johnson did.

The test is long and brave and honest labor for the country's good.

And this is the thing that these three men, different as they were in origin and in temperament, held in common. But it is no exclusive 'possession. Most certainly, it is not confined to presidents or other officers of state. Our country would not last long if that were true. The strength of this Republic lies in the fact that so many millions of men and women, who held no office and aspire to none, recognize as clearly as Jackson, Polk, and Johnson did that they must serve their country before they serve themselves.

This truth becomes supremely important on the day that the people go to the polling places. It is not the hand that signs the laws that holds the destiny of America. It is the hand that casts the ballot.

We are now drawing close to the date fixed by law for the exercise of that right and the performance of that duty. It is the day when every qualified voter in the country shares the responsibility laid upon the officers of the government and first of all upon a President. Indeed, on that day the responsibility passes from the President and rests with you. The wisdom of your decision on election day is the only sure and enduring "preservation, protection and defense of the Constitution of the United States."

To assure the wisdom of your decision, you cannot do better than revive within your own hearts and minds the spirit that animated these three illustrious sons of North Carolina. Men and women who exercise their franchise in the spirit of these three great men will not be blinded by passion or prejudice. They will not be deceived by smooth flattery, or smoother propaganda. Indeed, to be influenced by nothing but what you know to be true and what you feel to be just as you cast your ballot is to attain a dignity to which title and office can add nothing--the dignity of a free American.

The man who votes in this spirit on election day is just as patriotic as was each of these three Presidents. He is the kind of man the great State of North Carolina delights to honor. The President of the United States honors himself by praising that kind of man. Such a man stands as the symbol of freedom and dignity on this earth. We dedicate here today not merely a monument to great men of the past, but also to the greatness of free men now and forever.